A Beggar’s Kingdom

A week went by, the lungs got better, the tank had gone. Ashton and Julian still hadn’t talked. Julian still hadn’t returned to work.

After another week, Ashton walked into Julian’s bedroom on a Saturday afternoon and surveyed the abnormal disorder inside. Julian knew his room did not look rational to a man who was used to Julian being meticulous with his belongings and who was suddenly greeted with a scene as after a ransacking or an earthquake. Hundreds of books were strewn on the bed and the floor: history, how-to, biography, travel, plays, and philosophies. Everywhere newspapers, broken pencils, open notebooks, pencil shavings, a sharpener on its side, half-empty plastic cups of water, an unmade bed, and on it, a half-naked Julian with a magnifying glass and a superbright LED lamp trained on a coffee-table tome of London paintings from the 1600s. He was trying to find a glimpse of something true somewhere, anywhere, to prove to himself she had been real. He’d been sleeping poorly, attacked by bewildering nightmares, callbacks to old visions and memories once so vivid, now half-forgotten. This time, there was no Josephine shining on the street. Instead there was terror and fire followed by a dismal icy darkness.

A pallid, unshaven Julian raised his head from the book to face Ashton grimly homing in on the chaos. Julian tried to smile. He could tell his friend wanted to make a joke, lighten the mood, but comedy was beyond even him.

“What the fuck,” Ashton said. That was as funny as he could make it.

“Don’t ask.”

“I feel I must, dude. I must ask. What the fuck.”

“Everything’s okay.”

“It’s two in the afternoon,” Ashton said, as if that was the only thing that was wrong.

“Then what are you still doing home? Did you go to Valentina’s, get us food like you said?”

“Don’t answer my questions with questions,” Ashton said. “What are you doing? What are you writing, reading, looking for? Why the magnifying glass, why the mania? What’s happening? What the fuck is happening?”

Dressed in nothing but boxer briefs, Julian swung his aching feet onto the floor. He was uncontained. He was a dead leaf in the yellow river, an ailing creature, a rotting marmoset. How could he have not seen it coming? How could he have allowed it to happen. Allowed it to happen again.

“Why are you examining this nonsense with a microscope? Old London? What are you looking for?” Ashton picked up A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. “Edmund Burke? If you’re going to self-destruct, why can’t you self-destruct with porn, with ribald novels from de Sade: Erotica, Justine?”

Julian could not explain to Ashton the inner howl of his helplessness.

“Burke wrote that all things are good that obey reason,” Ashton said. “Does anything you’re doing fit that category?”

“Did you come in just to harass me?”

“I need another reason? Put some clothes on, will you. You have a visitor.”

“You’re full of shit. Who?”

“I don’t know who, but there’s a man on the landing who says, and I quote, that he lost the piece of paper with my number but knew where I lived and you had told him to come tell me you weren’t coming back. I understood not a single fucking thing of that. The individual words maybe.”

“Devi?”

“I don’t know, Jules. I’m guessing he’s a fellow inmate, let out for an afternoon. Hurry up. It doesn’t look as if he’s got long before they come to take him back to the asylum. Kind of like you.”

A pale Devi stood at the door when Julian limped out into the living room in sweats and a pullover.

“Hello, Julian. I see you’ve returned—again.” Devi sounded so disappointed.

“You’re minimally observant.”

“Returned from where?” Ashton said.

“How are you feeling?” said Devi.

“How do I look?” said Julian.

“Like a man who’s been in a hundred and one fights. And lost them all.”

From the kitchen, Ashton smirked. “So he knows about the boxing? Wow.”

“Devi, you’ve met Ashton?”

“Not formally.”

“Ashton, Devi. Devi, Ashton.”

With wary reserve, Ashton stepped forward, and the two men shook hands, Ashton silent and blond towering over the little man silent and dark.

“Returned from where?” Ashton repeated. Neither Julian nor Devi answered. Ashton swore under his breath, grabbed his jacket and said he was going on a food run. Devi said Julian needed some plain chicken and white rice. Julian said no. Ashton said he was getting it anyway and split.

“You need food,” Devi said, coming closer.

Julian sank into the sofa.

“How’s your friend handling you?”

“Fine.”

“You haven’t told him?”

“Told him what.”

Devi perched stiffly in the corner of the opposite sofa. “Tell me.”

“You really need to be told? You know what happened.”

“I don’t.”

“Is that why you didn’t want me to go? Did you know all along?”

Devi stared into his crippled hands. “I’m waiting.”

Julian told him.

London burned. It burned to the ground. And she along with it. All the glory was laid to dust.

Then they were mute.

“Come back to Quatrang with me, Julian,” Devi said. “You need healing.” He added, “Please.”

“I’ve had just about enough of your healing, don’t you think?”

“Very often,” Devi said, “what God first helps us with is not virtue itself, but the power of trying again. And you did that. You tried again. What a noble thing that is. What a gallant effort. Don’t minimize it.”